Helen Thomas Retires After Controversial Remarks

[American Dream]

All that indignation over Helen Thomas' words, so little indignation over the killing of civilians who are not Israeli...

[American Dream]

[Simulist]

Thank you so much for posting that video, AD.

For people either with slow internet connections or for those who for whatever reason can't see the video, here is a short transcription of some of the remarks by Medea Benjamin, the Jewish woman on the left of the screen:

"I think Jewish sentiment in this country is changing rapidly. I don't think that there are Jews who would agree with the statement that she made, but I think they would agree with what she meant to say which is that Israel should not be an occupier and that Palestine should be free and Palestinians should have their human rights. And she was saying that American Jews who go to Israel now, and say, 'Ah! This is my homeland, give me a piece of land!' should not have the right to that land over people of Palestinian origin who have been there for generations. And that's a sentiment that many American Jews have begun to recognize. And we see the changing of the landscape among the Jewish citizens here in the United States, and I think we're going to see a change very rapidly — especially in light of the fact that Israel just killed nine civilians in international waters, one of whom is American, and those flotillas are going to keep going. Now there's more there to go. In fact, we're going to try to do one of American Jews going there because we want to be known as American Jews for people who stand up for what Judaism is really about: kindness, generosity, love thy neighbor, and not as a violent occupier."

— Medea Benjamin, political activist and co-founder of the anti-war group, Code Pink

[BOOGIE66]

"I agree with her."

She thinks Jews should go back to Germany and Poland. And you agree with that racist fucking bullshit?

I think the right to free speech should be more important than not criticizing Israel.

[Bruce Dazzling]

The Scourging of Helen Thomas

By RALPH NADER

The termination of Helen Thomas’ 62-year long career as a pioneering, no-nonsense newswoman was swift and intriguingly merciless.

The event leading to her termination began when she was sitting on a White House bench under oppressive summer heat. The 89-year old hero of honest journalism and women’s rights, the scourge of dissembling presidents and White House press secretaries, answered a passing visitor’s question about Israel with a snappish comment worded in a way she didn’t mean; she promptly apologized in writing. Recorded without permission on a hand video, the brief exchange, that included a defense of dispossessed Palestinians, went internet viral on Friday, June 7.

By Monday, Helen Thomas was considered finished, even though she embodied a steadfast belief, in the praiseworthy words of Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, “that anybody standing on that podium [in the White House] should be regarded with skepticism.”

Over the weekend, her lecture agent dropped her. Her column syndicator, the Hearst company, pressed her to quit “effective immediately,” and, it was believed that the White House Correspondents Association, of which she was the first female president, was about to take away her coveted front row seat in the White House press room.

Then, Helen Thomas announced her retirement on Monday, June 10. No doubt she’s had her fill of ethnic, sexist and ageist epithets hurled her way over the years – the very decades she was broadly challenging racism, sexism and, more recently, ageism.

Although the behind the scenes story has yet to come out, the evisceration was launched by two pro-Israeli war hawks, Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis. Fleischer was George W. Bush’s press secretary who bridled under Helen Thomas’ questioning regarding the horrors of the Bush-Cheney war crimes and illegal torture. His job was not to answer this uppity woman but to deflect, avoid and cover up for his bosses.

Davis was the designated defender whenever Clinton got into hot water. As journalist Paul Jay pointed out, he is now a Washington lobbyist whose clients include the cruel corporate junta that overthrew the elected president of Honduras. Both men rustled up the baying pack of Thomas-haters during the weekend and filled the unanswered narrative on Fox and other facilitating media.

Then, belatedly, something remarkable occurred. People reacted against this grossly disproportionate punishment. Ellen Ratner, a Fox News contributor, wrote – “I’m Jewish and a supporter of Israel. Let’s face it: we all have said things—or thought things—about ‘other’ groups of people, things that we wouldn’t want to see in print or on video. Anyone who denies it is a liar. Giver her [Helen] a break.”

Apparently, many people agree. In an internet poll by the Washington Post, 92% of respondents said she should not be removed from the White House press room. As an NPR listener, R. Carey, e-mailed: “D.C. would be void of journalists if they all were to quit, get fired or retire after making potentially offensive comments.”

Listen to Michael Freedman, former managing editor for United Press International: “After seven decades of setting standards for quality journalism and demolishing barriers for women in the workplace, Helen Thomas has now shown that most dreaded of vulnerabilities—she is human…. Who among us does not have strong feelings about the endless warfare in the Middle East? Who among us has said something we have come to regret?.... Let’s not destroy Ms. Thomas now.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, wrote: “Thomas was the only accredited White House correspondent with the guts to ask Bush the tough questions that define a free press…. Her remarks were offensive, but considering her journalistic moxie and courage over many decades—a sharp contrast to the despicable deeds committed by so many littering the Washington political scene – isn’t there room for someone who made a mistake, apologized for it and wants to continue speaking truth to power and asking tough questions?”

Last week, in front of the White House, people calling themselves “Jews for Helen Thomas” gathered in a small demonstration. Medea Benajmin—cofounder of Global Exchange, declared that “We are clear what Helen Thomas meant to say, which is that Israel should cease its occupation of Palestine and we agree with that.” While another demonstrator, Zool Zulkowitz, asserted that “by discrediting Helen Thomas, those who believe that Israel can do no wrong shift attention from the public relations debacle of the Gaza Flotilla killings, and intimidate journalists who would ask hard questions about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and American foreign policy.”

Helen Thomas, who grew up in Detroit, is an American of Arab descent. She is understandably alert to the one-sided U.S. military and foreign policy in that region. Her questions reflect concerns about U.S. policy in the Middle East by many Americans, including unmuzzled retired military, diplomatic and intelligence officials.

In 2006 when George W. Bush finally called on her, she started her questioning by saying “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.” Or when she challenged President Obama last month, asking “When are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse?”

Asking the “why” questions was a Thomas trademark. Many self-censoring journalists avoid controversial “why” questions, thereby allowing evasion, dissembling and just plain B.S. to dominate the White House press room. She rejected words that sugarcoated or camouflaged the grim deeds. She started with the grim deeds to expose the doubletalk and officialdom’s chronic illegalities.

What appalled Thomas most is the way the media rolls over and fails to hold officials accountable. (British reporters believe they are tougher on their Prime Ministers.) This is a subject about which she has written books and articles—not exactly the way to endear herself to those reporters who go AWOL and look the other way, so that they cancontinue to be called upon or to be promoted by their superiors.

The abysmal record of the New York Times and the Washington Post in the months preceding the Iraq invasion filled with Bush-Cheney lies, deception, and cover-ups is a case in point. As usual, she was proven right, not the celebrated reporters and columnists deprecating her work, including the Post’s press critic, Howard Kurtz.

Thomas practiced her profession with a deep regard for the peoples’ right to know. To her, as Aldous Huxley noted long ago, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Lastly, there is the double standard. One off-hand “ill-conceived remark,” as NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard stated, in praising Ms. Thomas, ended a groundbreaking career. While enhanced careers and fat lecture fees are the reward for ultra-right wing radio and cable ranters, and others like columnist Ann Coulter, who regularly urge wars, mayhem and dragnets based on bigotry, stereotypes and falsehoods directed wholesale against Muslims, including a blatant anti-semitism against Arabs. (See http://www.adc.org/education/educational-resources/ and Jack Shaheen’s book and companion documentary about cultural portrayal of Arab stereotypes, Reel Bad Arabs.)

Ms. Thomas’ desk at the Hearst office remains unattended a week after her eviction. One day she will return to pack up her materials. She can take with her the satisfaction of joining all those in our history who were cashiered ostensibly for a gaffe, but really for being too right, too early, too often.

Her many admirers hope that she continues to write, speak and motivate a generation of young journalists in the spirit of Joseph Pulitzer’s advice to his reporters a century ago—that their job was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader06162010.html

[Jeff]

Harper wants NDP to fire deputy Libby Davies for criticism of Israel
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 5:10 PM

Stephen Harper called NDP House leader Libby Davies an extremist and then compared her to Helen Thomas, the long-time White House correspondent who was forced to resign recently over controversial remarks about Israel.

He didn’t stop there.

He demanded that her boss, NDP Leader Jack Layton, fire Ms. Davies, a Vancouver MP, who is also the party’s deputy leader, over remarks she made that questioned Israel’s right to exist.

“I am looking forward to seeing the Leader of the NDP get up and unequivocally distance himself from the comments of his House leader and his deputy leader that have called Israel's existence an occupation,” said Mr. Harper. “This is a fundamental denial of Israel's right to exist. It repeats the kinds of comments that were made by Helen Thomas on which she was forced to resign, and the member of the NDP who said that should be forced to resign as well.”

It was a firey Question Period Tuesday, with the Prime Minister lashing out at Mr. Layton, who was trying to needle him about the deal reached between the Liberals, Bloc and the government over the release of the Afghan detainee documents.

The NDP walked away from the negotiations Tuesday morning, saying that they were a joke and the public would not be getting to the truth of whether there was torture of the prisoners.

...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le1605386/

Libby's response to inflamatory editorial
June 11, 2010
Updates from Libby

June 11, 2010
Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to your June 11 editorial which refers to a video of me recorded last Saturday, and posted online (Hater's, Ottawa Citizen, June 11, 2010).

My reference to the year 1948 as the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory was a serious and completely inadvertent error; I apologize for this and regret any confusion it has caused.

I have always supported a two-state solution to the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have never questioned Israel's right to exist and the Palestinian’s right to a viable state.

New Democrats have long called for a peaceful, negotiated end to the conflict where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side with secure borders. This is a policy I fully support.

I reject the allegation that I hate Israel, and I reject the assertion that I said that Israel is illegitimate or an abomination. Neither are true.

Libby Davies
MP Vancouver East

http://www.libbydavies.ca/news/update/2 ... -editorial

[Cordelia]

It's chilling how quickly the guillotine landed on Helen Thomas (imagine if P'sTB had responded so quickly to an unfolding disaster, like in the GoM).

It's shocking, but not surprising, what Washington and its media machinery will do to one of their elders. She was made an example of and another message was sent.

[Bruce Dazzling]

How long until Helen Thomased is recognized by the OED as a verb?

[norton ash]

Re:

Harper wants NDP to fire deputy Libby Davies for criticism of Israel

Google 'motion to condemn Israel apartheid week' if you want to see Canadian politicians kowtowing to Israel.

This spring, various pro-Israeli groups muscled elected federal and provincial parliamentary reps to stand up and mouth the words of a motion to condemn an 'Israeli Apartheid Week' of education/demonstrations being held on Canadian campuses. The Harper neo-cons went for it immediately, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff supported it, and the majority of MPs, MPPs and MLA's from urban centres got right on board.

This is coercion by a very powerful lobby: support Israel by vilifying debate and free speech on campuses as dangerous racism, or gravely reduce your chances for re-election by going against us.

The extraordinary condemnation of IAW by Canada’s politicians doesn’t show any particular insight into the Israel-Palestine conflict, but rather obliviousness to grassroots solidarity organizing that grows in its effectiveness each year. If readers are curious about what has provoked Canada’s politicians to near-unanimously take steps to condemn a series of modest educational events organized mainly by students on campuses across the country, I encourage them to consult http://www.apartheidweek.org and to attend an IAW event in your community. Make up your own mind.

-- Canadian activist Jaggi Singh

The motion passed in the Ontario legislature, but was defeated in federal Parlament.

NDP, BQ defeat motion to condemn Israel Apartheid Week
Tuesday, 16 March 2010

OTTAWA – A motion in Parliament condemning Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) was blocked by the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois last week.

Both the government and the Liberals had supported the motion. The NDP defended it as a form of “free speech.”

In a press release following the motion’s defeat, Conservative MP Tim Uppal, who initiated the motion, stated: “I do not understand why the Bloc would object to this motion and it saddens me that they did. However, I am even more troubled by the fact that the NDP chose to publicly defend this hateful event. I find their support for IAW reprehensible.”

Uppal said it is unfortunate that they “fail to see the dangers of Israeli Apartheid Week and fail to support the state of Israel…. Israeli Apartheid Week creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation on our campuses…. It’s important for Members of Parliament to stand up and publicly condemn efforts to single out one group of people for harsh treatment.”

http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/i ... -Week.html

[JackRiddler]

Surprising thread on DU, fellow says he talked to Helen Thomas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x8574454

Helen Thomas to DU--thank you for the support!!

It's 1 AM here, and I have to be up in 3 hours, so I'll say right now that most details will come later, maybe over the weekend if I get a half hour to breathe (%§(&%§(&%§ day job).

I just spent an hour on the phone with Helen at her home in Washington. She says that for the moment she is under "self-imposed house arrest."

She knows she expressed herself poorly, but since all she ever learned about pacifism and humanity came from Jews (her words), she would never consider herself an "anti-Semite," quite apart for the fact that Arabs are a Semitic people as well as Jews are, and she was good friends with my father for nearly 50 years, and he was of Jewish extraction himself. But she also knows and understands her detractors, and wouldn't dream of wanting ill words published about them on her behalf. She is just not the hating kind. She said if you want a hate-filled columnist, go seek out Charles Krauthammer.

But I told her about all the words of support for her I saw here on DU, and, although she knows of it, of course (after all those roses, how could she not?) as she doesn't follow DU (so far!), she was completely unaware that there was a site where she had so much (if, admittedly not universal) support for all she had done throughout the years. She said to say thanks to those who stood with her, and extend her regrets with no malice to those who didn't.

Please don't bother with hateful comments, if you still happen to feel that way toward her. I won't be forwarding them
on to her, so save your breath. If you do harbor her ill will, fine, I understand, and so does she, but her message was to those who extended warm feelings, as she has been dumped upon like never before in her whole lifetime up to now, and didn't know how to confront it. She thanked me (!!) for staying her friend (as if I would entertain the notion of anything else--when my dad passed away, guess who was first to arrive at his memorial service?), and said that she was being treated as "toxic" by many who she had considered friends for decades. I am not one of THOSE "friends."

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I met her in Oakland Airport at 6am back when I flew to my work every day.
It was during the Cheney administration, around 2004 or so. Deep into the new permanent Dark Side. Flying into the Southern states was like going into Munich '34.

We were on the same flight and I recognized her at the gate seating but I let her eat her muffin before approaching to chat with her. It was absurdly early in the morning.

After we commiserated over the state of our country I pulled out the pocket copy of the US Constitution I had been flying with for some time, like carrying a Bible through vampire country.

I asked her to autograph it. She did with a big grandmotherly smile as though signing a birthday card for a graduating favorite grandson.

She wrote:

To [my name],
My admiration for a man who loves the 1st Amendment as much as I do.
-Helen Thomas

I'll pass it on to someone important to me some day.

[Simulist]

That's truly wonderful, Hugh.

I think Helen Thomas is a beautiful person, and I will always admire her.

[JackRiddler]

http://counterpunch.org/gardner06152010.html
(Article reproduced here under fair-use provisions, with original link given, solely for non-commercial purposes of archiving, education and discussion.)

Helen Thomas' Watergate Scoop

June 15, 2010
Helen and Martha


By FRED GARDNER

The alacrity —the relief— with which her fellow journalists allowed Helen Thomas to be offed is shameful but understandable. She showed them all up. She was the only one whose questions weren't mealy-mouthed, the only anti-war voice in a roomful of enablers.

Polite reviews of her career credit Thomas with gender-related firsts and longevity. None acknowledge the role she played in exposing the Watergate cover-up. It was Helen Thomas who lent a sympathetic, respectful ear when Martha Mitchell claimed that the burglary of Democratic Party files had been planned at the highest levels in the White House. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear…

John Mitchell, Martha's second husband, was a successful Wall St. lawyer whose firm hired Nixon after Tricky Dick lost his bid to become Governor of California in 1962. Six years later, with the U.S. military mired in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson resigned, the Democrats split into pro- and anti-war camps, and Nixon was elected president. John Mitchell moved to Washington to be attorney general.

At first, Martha Mitchell, a belle from Arkansas, actually believed Nixon's lip-service about the wives of his cabinet members playing an active role in his administration. She soon became disenchanted. She hated the way, at parties, "the men went off by themselves for cordials and cigars on the sun porch and the women went to another room." She would look at the women in the living room "in their beautiful gowns, lined up like dolls in a museum and think 'We're nothing but window dressing!'" She hated Chief Justice Warren Burger because he gave her a lecture about smoking.

Martha Mitchell overheard a lot of things that dismayed her. Occasionally she would place a nocturnal phone call to a reporter —Helen Thomas of United Press International was her favorite— to share observations. Nixon viewed her as a vague threat. He feared and hated women in general, according to Martha. "I didn't even exist," she told Winzola McClendon, a reporter who became her biographer; "nor in my opinion, did any woman, as far as Richard Nixon was concerned. He wanted men around him."

Martha wanted John to leave the government and return to his law practice in Manhattan. According to McLendon's revealing biography, she dreamed of throwing dinner parties for his sophisticated private-sector clients, far away from Haldeman, Ehrlichman and the other low-level management types who ran the White House. John promised that they would get out of Washington after the '72 election. He resigned as Attorney General that spring so he could run the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).

Mitchell's strategy called for Nixon to remain in the White House and act "presidential." He feared that if Nixon were out campaigning, the American people might pick up on just how bizarre his personality really was. By the spring of 1972, the Republicans' top drawing card at campaign events was none other than Martha Mitchell. When Henry Kissinger had to bow out of a June 16 fundraising event in Newport Beach, CREEP assigned Martha. That's where she was —partying with Charlton Heston, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and John Wayne— on the night of the Watergate break-in. The party was a drag and Pat Nixon snubbed Martha, as usual.

Back at the hotel Martha wanted to discuss the snub with John, but he was huddled with his aides. They didn't tell her that five CREEP operatives had just been caught trying to steal files from Democratic Party headquarters. Keeping the about-to-break news from Martha was literally the first step of the Watergate cover-up. Next morning John flew back to D.C. to direct the disinformation campaign, after convincing Martha to stay in California because she needed rest.

Martha got an LA Times and read that James McCord, a CREEP employee, had been arrested. The story contained a statement by her husband that she knew to be a lie: "A man identified as employed by our campaign committee was one of five persons arrested at the Democratic National Committee headquarters... The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed at our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system... We want to emphasize that this man and the other people were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent."

John Mitchell had delegated two people to stay with Martha at the Newporter Inn: his secretary, Lea Jablonsky, and a security guard named Steve King. Martha kept drinking Scotch, smoking Salems and growing more and more agitated as her husband refused to take her phone calls. On June 22 she called her Washington apartment and told John Mitchell's aide, Fred LaRue, that if her husband didn't quit politics immediately, she would leave him. She added that she was going to tell the press. She then called Helen Thomas of UPI. While Martha was on the phone with Thomas, Steve King --alerted by LaRue or Mitchell-- ran into her bedroom, threw her onto the bed and ripped the phone out of the wall.

"The conversation ended abruptly when it appeared someone took away the phone from her hand," Helen Thomas reported. "She was heard to say 'You just get away.'" When Thomas called back the hotel operator told her, "Mrs. Mitchell is indisposed and cannot talk."

The White House put out the story that Martha was about to be institutionalized. Back at the Newport Inn, her guards wouldn't give her food but plied her with liquor. She eventually negotiated the right to fly back east. She checked into the Westchester Country Club and called UPI to declare, "I'm leaving him until he decides to leave the campaign. It's horrible to me... I'm not going to stand for all those dirty things that go on. If you could see me you wouldn't believe it. I'm black and blue. I'm a political prisoner... They don't want me to talk."

In his famous comeback interview with David Frost in September '77, Richard Nixon said, "If it hadn't been for Martha, there'd have been no Watergate, because John wasn't mindin' the store." Nixon told Frost that Martha was mentally unbalanced and that "John was practically out of his mind about Martha in the spring of 1972. He was letting Magruder and all these boys, these kids, these nuts, run this thing."

It was a total lie. In the spring of 1972 Martha Mitchell was a highly active, visible and popular member of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. They turned her into a crazy drunken dame.

In All The President's Men there's a turning-point scene in which Jason Robards, the editor of the Washington post (played by Ben Bradlee) tells Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (played by Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward) that he just can't let them make unsubstantiated allegations about the president of the United States —as if the Attorney General's wife hadn't been making the same allegations for months to Helen Thomas! Woodward and Bernstein didn't break the story, they confirmed it.

Fred Gardner is editor of O'Shaughnessy's. He can be reached at: fred@plebesite.com

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.fcnp.com/news/8196-veteran-j ... press.html

Veteran Journalist Thomas Resumes Column in News-Press Print E-mail
Thursday, January 06 2011 08:00:00 AM

Legendary journalist and 50-year veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas has come out of a seven-month retirement to resume her weekly political affairs column today, published in print and online exclusively in the Falls Church News-Press.

Thomas' first column back appears on Page 13 of this edition, and its subject is Social Security reform.

Now age 90, Thomas began her journalistic career in 1942 and has covered every U.S. president one a day-to-day basis as a White House correspondent since 1960. She declared her retirement abruptly on June 8, 2010 following a firestorm of criticism that arose from spontaneous taped comments she made the day before that some claimed to be anti-Semitic.

But in a statement also published in today's edition, News-Press owner-editor Nicholas F. Benton writes that, as one who has known Ms. Thomas since 1991, "She is progressive, and following my more than eight hours of direct, one-on-one talks with her since the events of last June, I remain firmly convinced that she is neither bigoted, nor racist, nor anti-Semitic."

He added, "I am proud that a journalist of the stature and professionalism of Helen Thomas is relaunching her career, in her ninetieth year no less, in my newspaper. She more than deserves, and I am honored to help provide her the proverbial 'second chance." (Benton's full statement appears on Page 6 of this edition).

A journalist of national renown, who has published two books of memoirs of covering all the U.S. presidents since John F. Kennedy and the recipient of countless awards and honors, Thomas is no stranger to readers of the News-Press. Her syndicated column appeared every week in the News-Press beginning in January 2004, and on two occasions since visited the offices of the News-Press for public events to greet her readers and supporters.

In an exclusive interview with the News-Press in her Northwest Washington, D.C. home last week, recalled the highlights of her illustrious life.

Her parents coming from a section of Syria that became Lebanon, she was the sixth of eight children. Her parents located to a small town in Kentucky, where other relatives had come before, and her father operated a food cart before opening his own grocery store. Ms. Thomas was born on Aug. 4, 1920.

In 1924, the family moved to Detroit because the auto industry began booming there. Thomas' father remained in the grocery business there, and she was moved when she recalled that it was her parents' passion to see that all their children were educated.

As a result, all eight children attended college, and seven graduated, including her from Wayne State University. "That's quite an accomplishment for a first-generation family in America," she said.

Because of her interest in journalism, she came to Washington, D.C. upon her graduation from college in 1942, and got her first job as a "copy boy" at a newspaper. It was easy for a woman to find a job in those days, she said, "because every man who had a pulse was drafted into the war."

While she and a group of colleagues were all summarily fired from that newspaper for demanding a $5 raise, it led to her seeking a new job and being hired by the United Press International (UPI) wire service, which remained her employer until 2000.

In 1960, she began covering daily press briefings in the White House, and knew personally all of the U.S. presidents since that time. She soon commanded the first row center seat in the White House press briefing room, and for televised presidential press conferences, she and her rival from the Associated Press took turns being invited to ask either the first, or second, question of the president.

Thomas resigned from UPI in 2000 when it was acquired by the Unification Church. "That was a bridge too far," she said, when asked about the acquisition and her decision to leave.

She was then employed by the Hearst Newspapers, and while continuing to attend daily White House briefings, she shifted from filing daily news stories to writing a weekly syndicated column.

Among other things, she was known for standing alone among White House journalists with her sharp questioning of Bush administration officials about the alleged "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, prior to the invasion.

Last June 6, Thomas retired the day after she was asked to make impromptu remarks about Israel in the wake of news that Israeli commandos had boarded a ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza and killed numerous civilians.

In his statement today, News-Press editor Benton writes of that incident, "Ms. Thomas' comments were intemperate and inappropriate, as she conceded afterward....Her remarks in June were in response to a question about Israel, not Jews, and were intended to mean that in these times, Jewish people are free to live wherever they wish, because the era of anti-Jewish persecution is ended. That was not adequately expressed because of the impromptu nature of the incident."

Among others, Ms. Thomas' plight last summer drew sympathy from former President Jimmy Carter, who called her to offer his support.